Trophy Gold, by Jesse Ross, is the game that I am most regularly recommending TTRPG people read and play. It’s not what I thought it would be, while also somehow being exactly what I wanted. A complicated feeling! But it scratches quite a profound itch.
In the space of the following sentences, I shall try to explain.
This review was originally posted to Kieron’s newsletter . It’s been edited slightly, as there was a whole section about how folks often unsubscribe to the newsletter when I wrote at length about RPGs, which clearly isn’t needed here. A note on content too – I don’t trace the genealogy of mechanics at all. This was written as an entryist review to speak to a curious audience mostly unaware of the indie rpg scene of the last decade and change.
I’ve been searching for treasure for a long time. I have my freeform player-narrative games. I have my doomed horror games. I have my classical adventure games, in various traditions. I have a whole bunch of games that do great things which are entirely separate from all the things that D&D did and does. But I didn’t have a game which found a precise spot I craved satisfied two core things at once.
In short, I had an itch. Trophy Gold scratches the itch. It scratches the itch firing a crossbow bolt through it. It is intensely co-operative. It is intensely merciless. It was exactly what I needed.
In this article Jim talked to Jesse Ross, who was the creator of one of our favourite experiences in the past year, Trophy Gold. This is an excellent grimdark horror RPG which in turn is builds on Ross’ success with the horror one-shot machine of Trophy Dark. Go back and have a read if you want some context for what all the fuss is about. Or better still, play a few games of the Trophy games, we are fairly certain you won’t regret it.
Anyway, here’s a (very slightly edited) transcript of the correspondence between myself and Mr Ross. (And, fwiw, we’re now very excited about forthcoming The Piper’s Call…)
